Karri Ramo is the answer to a dubious trivia question by snapping a lengthy drought for the Calgary Flames.

Ramo’s 23-save performance in a 2-0 win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night was not only his first NHL shutout and the first by the Flames this season but the first for the team by anybody not named Miikka Kiprusoff in nearly 10 years.

“That’s a while ago,” said Flames centre Mikael Backlund, whose second-period goal ended up the winner. “It’s awesome. I’m happy for Karri. He was great (Monday night).

“He’s worked hard.”

The last goalie other than Kiprusoff to pitch a shutout for the Flames was Roman Turek on March 24, 2004.

Consider that Backlund celebrated his 15th birthday a week before Turek’s win over the Phoenix Coyotes that night. At that time, Sean Monahan — whose third-period tally was the insurance goal — was only nine years old.

“That tells there hasn’t been many goalies that played on this team since 2004,” Ramo said.

The answer is 13 other goalies besides Kiprusoff suited up for the team in the interim.

Ramo was more excited about it being his first, in his 69th NHL tilt.

“It’s good that it’s out of the way,” Ramo said. “I can’t lie — you always think about it when you played a bunch of games. But not having finished one without (surrendering) a goal, it’s good.”

It helped that the Flames had a veritable offensive outburst by recent standards before a crowd of 15,276 fans at PNC Arena.

The Flames scored more than one goal for only the second time since Christmas, a nine-game stretch in which they were blanked five times, although the defensive play was all everyone wanted to talk about.

“We had a tough week last week with some blowout games, so it was huge for us to shut the door and score a couple,” Backlund said. “We weren’t playing defence as well as before, so we had to go back to basics.”